Try for Courage
by metacognitive
Summary: In which Stiles is trying to deal with a monster and no one seems to care about specifics.


Title: Try for Courage  
Summary: In which Stiles is trying to deal with a monster and no one seems to care about specifics.  
Character(s): Stiles, Cora, OC  
Notes: Post-series, potentially AU. Drabble-ish. Quote/title from Kings of Leon's "Fans." I own nothing!

* * *

you ain't got the slang but you've got the face to play the roll

you can play with me

* * *

Stiles is lurking in the parking lot, feeling a lot like a creeping predator, when he sees her come out of the school. She's flanked by two friends, both dark haired, though one has the features of a Filipina and the other has loose curls and glasses. Between them, Derek Hale's daughter digs a lighter out of her pocket and a cigarette from her backpack. In the back of his throat, he can feel a sharp reprimand coming on. Just as he stifles the unnecessary hassling she catches his eye from across the parking lot, her whole face lighting up. She's got Derek's smile, apparently, which is unnerving, but besides that all Stiles can really see is her mother's side. That may be because he knows her rather well, compared to the few Hale family pictures that have survived after all these years. Derek says that the bone structure's too similar to differentiate the two, which makes Stiles worry for different reasons, but alas, that's not his business either.

She tilts her head at him, before passing off the cigarette and lighter with a guilty grin in his direction. The Filipina girl takes it easily, lighting up in a practiced motion before narrowing her eyes. Stiles can see the girls argue a bit, Curly-Q (as he has christened the girl with glasses) making faces while the other two chatter heatedly. Finally they separate, with her two friends going to lean against what must be one of their cars while the youngest Hale makes her way towards Stiles.

He's prepared to just nod at her in greeting—he's standing with one leg bent, going for casual even though he knows he most likely looks vaguely uncomfortable and no doubt suspicious. His body language goes completely ignored, however, when she throws both arms around his neck, clinging in a way he definitely knows is inappropriate, his hands coming up automatically to keep her from tumbling to the floor. It's a dumb instinct at this point, considering she and her sister are both werewolves with the fantastic reflexes to match, but Stiles has learned that all instincts can come in handy at one point or another.

Right now, it's not, mostly because he's got an armful of sixteen-year-old girl, whose friends are not only giving him the dirtiest looks imaginable but who, again, happens to be the daughter of Derek Hale, who is scary and awful and only nice to Stiles when he has to be. Mostly when his wife scolds him, but whatever. If even Scott catches her scent on him he'll give a telling smirk and joke about how high school girls seem to love him now and, just, _no_. Stiles has come too far for that crap. She pulls away with a smirk, looking just like her aunt, knowing that she's got him in a tight spot. Her embrace had been coupled with a joyous, "Stiles!" which ruins any attempt at stealth he'd had going for him. (Which, by the way, was basically done for far before she showed up.)

He tells her so; "I'm not going to jail for you," and she just _laughs_. "No really," he insists, "I'm not getting arrested again."

"What were the charges again?" she asks, tilting her head at him and smiling. She's wearing tight-tight pants, which he will need to have words about with her mother good_ God_, and a loose sweater that he wholeheartedly approves of. It's got a random blue hockey team logo on it, because of course Derek Hale's daughter likes hockey. The world thinks Stiles' life is a joke and he doesn't appreciate it. Speaking of which.

"Kidnapping," Stiles says, distracted as he tugs at his crumpled gray coat, and then, "your mother's been avoiding me."

"What does your wife think of you constantly chasing after the Hale women?" she says, and Stiles ignores her just like she did him.

"I really need to talk to Deaton. Or your father, at least."

"We've got this whole werewolf thing so messed up," she says, crossing her arms over her chest, "used to be that no one knew the emissary."

"It's a bit safer this way," Stiles tells her, "not that you would know."

"You calling me spoiled, Stilinski?" she says, and Stiles could drown in the girl's mother's accent forever. God he loves New York.

"'Course not," he says, and gives her his most charming grin. She looks at him from below her eyelashes, biting at her lip, and he thinks that maybe he should tone it down a bit.

"Aw, c'mon now, Stiles," she wheedles, "this isn't much fun. Unless you didn't come to play?"

"When is your father back in town?" Stiles says after sighing, fixing her with a flat look, and she smiles again, infuriatingly innocent.

"I don't know." Stiles almost growls, stomping his feet to restart his circulation all while the teenager before him acts as if nothing important is happening. His dress shoes were a mistake.

"Goddamn it, look, no one is answering their calls, I need—"

"—to stop harassing my niece, Stilinski."

His head whips up fast enough to cause a crick, and he swears as his hand comes up to palm it. Cora Hale steps close to him—closer than is necessary, and he finds himself in a sandwich of Hale women. This is not how he expected the day to go, not when one is underage and the other is his ex.

"Goddamn it," he says again, and Cora frowns, bumps him with a shoulder. "Stop with the pushing," he says after there are a few steps between them, barely catching the way her eyes flash to her niece. He opens his mouth to say more, pauses, and decides not to. Something tells him that, perhaps, he and Cora are on the same page for once, and that creeps him out enough to let her handle the situation.

"Get to class," Cora says, still looking at Stiles, and the teenager amongst them huffs.

"_Cora,_" she says, hands moving to her hips, but her aunt flicks a head towards the school, finally sparing her niece a glance. "Now," Cora says, and is rewarded with a roll of hazel eyes.

"I'm in lunch," she says over shoulder, once she's a few feet away from them, and it looks like Cora has to bite her tongue not to lash out at the young woman as she scampers towards her friends. Stiles looks over at the group of young women still congregated together and sees them pass cigarettes amongst themselves before he gets caught staring again. With a sharp smirk tossed his way they walk towards the fields, no doubt trying to avoid someone besides Stiles or Cora catching them during a smoke break. Once they're out of earshot Cora focuses her attention on him again, cocking a hip to the side as she unintentionally mirrors the same position her niece had been in.

"You need to stop flirting with my niece," she says, tone too serious to be joking, and Stiles straightens.

"Hey," he says, careful, because he knows the Kate story and he knows the Paige story and he was there for the Jennifer one, too, "it wasn't intentional. I'm married. I have a _kid_...Sorry. I'll tone it down next time."

She stares at him for a long moment before nodding, rocking on her heels a bit so that they're almost-facing the same direction, caught somewhere between that and staring at each other. They're silent together for a moment, before she says, "You can't come after her. Either of them. You need something, call Derek. If he doesn't answer, stay out of it."

Stiles scoffs. "Uh, please," he says, "do you know me at all?" but it's the wrong thing to say, if her scowl and flashing eyes mean anything. He fights the urge to cower, because considering all he knows and does for Scott and for Derek sometimes, too, he's more than capable of holding his own in a fight with a beta. He squares his shoulders, goes in for a redo: "Look. You know just as well as I do that I don't have a choice when it comes to things like this. It's a threat to your pack, to mine, and to the whole town."

He hears her jaw crack menacingly, and wow, how does that even _work_.

"They've awakened Zipacna," Cora says, and of course she can pronounce it perfectly, none of the stumbling that Stiles struggles with, even when the wife and baby try to walk him through it, "and Cabrakan is the only way to stop him."

"How," Stiles says, "do you say that so nicely. Also, _what_. How do you find a Mayan deity. Why can they be found _here_. Just. _Why._"

(What are _questions_, Stiles.)

With a sigh that could rival his own previous one, Cora looks skyward as if asking, why?, too. Stiles feels the question is far more appropriate for himself, considering all the unnecessary uses of yarrow, jade, paprika, etc., he's had to memorize since the whole Scott-is-a-werewolf thing started. That and the various disasters that have come to define his life, not only in the darkness that is his heart now, but other, more mundane things too. Like how he can't appreciate horror flicks anymore. It's been twenty years and yes, Stiles will be complaining for the next _thirty_.

"I honestly don't understand how you're an adult," Cora says, "a _married_ adult. With a _child_. I thought there was a law against that."

"There should be a law against _you_," Stiles shoots back, immediately feeling twelve and inadequate again. He hates Cora, he really does. The entire Hale family can just leave.

"You've said that before," she says, and then Stiles is remembering warm breath at his ear and sinfully slow fingers trailing down his chest.

"I am _married_," he says to her again, sounding horrified and with his face twitching into who-knows-what—it's a bad expression, he's sure. Unfortunately, his marital status does not erase four rather serious years of being in a relationship with the Hale woman before him, nor does the fifteen-ish years since the breakup seem to make a difference to Cora. Which is very weird, considering she was the one to end things. Stiles tries not to dwell. Mostly because his wife will get this pinched look on her face and nothing he can say or do will convince her of the very-much-cooled relations between he and Cora. It's a mess.

Right now, though, Cora is rolling her shoulders back and half frowning at him, mouth moving. He zones back in right around the time she says, "—look, regardless, Deaton isn't going to be much help. Once Derek gets back, then stop by. He'll have the information by then." Stiles tries not to scream.

"Zipacna," Stiles says, but it sounds more like "sippy-pack-na" which is wrong, _so_ wrong, how is he married to a Mexican girl, "was frozen. In. Time. He's like a Mayan Medusa, except not really." Cora rolls her eyes, but Stiles is kind of rather frustrated and needs someone to rant at. He's lucky to be a professor of mythology, or else he'd get some very odd questions about the things he researches. "It's been who knows how many millennia since he was trapped, he's looking for his brother, and if I know anything about that type of thing it's that he's going to try his very hardest to find Cabrakan. We need to get going, because once Z-Man realizes he isn't going to find _anyone_, things are going to get a whole lot worse."

Except Cabrakan does not sound like "Cab-rakin'" but whatever, A for effort. Cora evidently does not agree: "Cabrakan," she says carefully, correctly, "exists. Everything _exists_. Little slivers of ourselves are left behind in every place we visit. How do you think hauntings work?"

"Ghosts are not real," Stiles says automatically, and Cora makes a frustrated noise, hands curled into fists in the sleeves of her leather jacket. Because of course.

"Not in the way Hollywood teaches us," she says, mouth pursing into a frown. Her eyes are wider now, more honest than they usually are when she's speaking to him, and it makes Stiles a bit sad to realize this is the most he's gotten out of her about _anything_ since she packed up all the things she'd had at his place and left for the first and last time. "But that's the not the point. All Zipacna needs is a piece of his brother, and he can channel his own energy into...restarting? Renewing, the—the source of power that was in Cabrakan. And with that, the brothers are reunited, and it will be rather easy, don't you think, to be convinced to start destroying things again?"

Stiles stews for a moment, furious because it makes sense and he wishes it didn't. He'd much rather just jump in, metaphorical guns blazing, and trap the Z-Man in stone again for another couple thousand years.

"I don't need this in my life right now," he finally settles on, rather than cursing out the ex-girlfriend or just crying. Cora gives him a wry look.

"Does anyone ever?" which is so not what Stiles needs to hear right now.

"That doesn't mean that Derek can't at least check in," he says, and Cora rolls her eyes, scans the parking lot quickly. Serious business? Oh, God, Stiles _so_ does not need this.

"He had to go see another pack," she says, voice low, "why do you even think I'm here right now? I don't usually keep an eye on the girls during the day. But the pack he's visiting isn't anywhere industrialized. So—"

"Where is it?" he interrupts her, and she presses her lips into a line, irritated. He drives her nuts, he knows, but the ADHD didn't get much better as the years passed. And this business right now? Rather important. California is dangerous enough with the fault line; they don't need an ancient god of mischief to go and make things worse for _fun_.

"Southern Mexico," Cora says after a moment, "Guatemalan border. They have the bestiary with the necessary information. Once he's back, you can all fix it."

"You make it seem like you're not part of this," he tells her, mind already whirring with the thoughts of variations within bestiaries, and he should give Deaton another call to see what he knows—even if him answering is unlikely, considering Derek is out of town. If he could get his hands on multiple versions, then a compilation of all of them would contain—

"I don't work with _you_, Stiles," she says, coldly, and he's violently tossed out of his thoughts to focus on her again. He stares at her face, still unbelievably young despite the both of them being in their late thirties. Then again, he hasn't aged much either. There's something about the supernatural that has preserved them, and it's more unnerving than anything.

"I," he says, and then nothing. Cora doesn't respond, either. Several minutes pass by where they stare impassively at each other, and just as Stiles opens his mouth, saying, "Look, it's not like you gave me a—" she says, "Get lost, Stilinski," and gives him another shove with her shoulder.

He decides to take the high road this one time, and not just because he needs to pee. "Yeah, okay. But I'll be calling you to check for Derek!" he says with wild gesticulation, and he turns, starts hustling towards his car. Something about the Hales, man, he thinks, they're always just too much to handle. That and, well, he'd really rather not have to revisit the memories of his college years. He loves his wife, don't get him wrong, but Cora was something else then and she hasn't changed much. It's...overwhelming, if he's being honest, and even with yet another supernatural entity-essence thing floating around trying to awaken things, he'd rather keep his distance than risk drama once more.

"Oh, and tell your wife, Stiles," Cora calls from where she's still standing in the school parking lot, and Stiles turns, head swiveling over the collar of his coat. This is weird. She's decked out in black and has her feet planted firmly on the ground, shoulder-width apart. Her hands are tucked into her pockets, and her mouth is redder than it seemed when they were standing together, dark hair loose and long around her face; "That I'm _not_ trying to steal her husband."

Silence.

Stiles' jaw drops once the words click, but by then Cora's turned to stalk her niece from a different point in the school, leaving Stiles to stare after her (not _at_ her, okay) and wonder what he did to suffer the Hale family's attention.

.

.

a/n: in this story Derek has two daughters, one in high school and one in university. The idea of a werewolf staying close to their school-aged pack members is a motif I've seen floating around, specifically in_ five first meetings_ over on AO3. Zipacna and Cabrakan are Mayan deities, and legend has Zipacna being trapped and killed/turned to stone by a mountain. I made up that ghost theory, though if it exists already then cool. Any issues, let me know! Please review before favoriting :)


End file.
